O’Conall Street

Ye good thing ye.

The country went stuffed turkey last night and put our Dustin in the fray for the least coveted prize in modern music, the Eurovision Song Contest.  Our hopes and dreams in Belgarde hang on Irelande Douze Point and the world’s finest avian artist.  It’s advocacy, it’s badvocacy, it’s ecumenical and evangenical. Poor old Johnny Logan will be turning in his botox.  

Stuff Barack - Vote for Dustin.

Up the Dubs!!!

The emergence of advocacy, the many on their soapboxes arguing for a cause, a brand or a candidate creates space for those who wish to communicate against it. In Weber Shandwick we call these negative advocates badvocates.

The video below (thanks to T for sharing with me) is a classic example of how social and digital media can be used to undermine a candidate (in this case Mike Huckabee) and his/her platform. It works in the same way the Black Eyed Pea  endorsement of Obama did but clearly the originators hope it will have the opposite effect. I’ll let you be the judge of that.

If you are from the North you will know what a Lundy is, and today I can hear the mob on O’Conall Street baying for the RTE ‘traitors’ who decided to shut down the ‘national’ broadcasters medium wave output, leaving many tens of thousands of listeners in the North without coverage.

The Good Friday Agreement signed ten years ago commits RTE to extending coverage to the 32 counties. With the exception of a boost in the TG4 signal the Irish broadcaster has done damn all to deliver on this solemn commitment in the Agreement. Over the past decade I have heard every argument going. From programme rights to advertising licences, RTE has always has a selfish reason for doing nothing.

The people of Ireland are closer today then at any time in recent history. I know an orangemen on the north coast who loves RTE and he is not alone. RTE is popular in NI, but do the D4 liberatchi give a toss, apparently not.

It will take the southern government getting serious about this issue to effect change. Meantime the only major institution on this island which seems determined to live in the past is the very one which for decades was believed to be a breeding ground for liberals and ‘new irelanders’. 

RTE are denying many northerners access to their own culture, sports (they have first rights to big GAA games for example) and news of their fellow countrymen and women. Hardly a credible position for a so called national broadcaster.  

Busy week on O’Conall Street so please be patient if the posts are not as regular as normal. Food on the table and all that.

Before I go. Amy cleans up at the Grammys and deservedly so - what an artist. Daniel  is the toast of the BAFTAS - glory to the living embodiment of the New Ireland, and, it’s a hat-trick in the States for Barack - is this the beginning of the end for the Ice Queen of Arkansas?

From a Dubliner in Antrim, my sympathies to the Saffron’s.    

There is a consensus that Hispanics vote for Clinton yet in California the placards at the Obama rally read si se puede - yes we can. In an age of celebrity the Illinois senator has his pick of advocates. From politics the Kennedys (including Arnie’s missus), from TV queen Oprah and from music everyone from Stevie Wonder to the Black Eyed Peas who have penned a song for Obama (thank you Alan, aka Yank in Ulster for picking up on the song). 

Hell I wish I was in the USA today. It’s like that scene in the very first episode of the West Wing when Sam asks Josh on the street outside his NY law office if Bartlett is ’the real thing’.

Too good to be true I hear you say. Lets face it the West Wing was just good fiction. Maybe but then maybe not. What if when I write the next post Barack Obama has done enough to keep himself neck and neck with the finest Democratic Party dynasty since the Kennedys. What if committed democrats realise that everywhere there is an open primary (one in which independent voters can vote) Obama is leading and conclude that he can reach beyond the party loyalists and run all the way up Pennsylvania Avenue to an inauguration speech for the history books.

Bottom line about progressive politics is that it is not just about mobilising the progressives, it’s mobilising the middle ground also. They are the people who do not consider themselves radical or even progressive for that matter. ‘Ordinary’ people who care about their jobs, their families and their next holiday - the many millions who catapult a candidate into the power. This is the electability test for any democratic candidate and the key message Obama and his people need to communicate. He crosses the divide - she doesn’t.

Young Chris Brown from Downpatrick got a ticket to see Obama in Boston yesterday evening. Our account manager is a Clintonite and not an easy man to shift. The text this morning read: “Obama totally awesome - 15ft from Teddy K, John Kerry, C Kennedy, Gov of Mass and 2 congressmen. He spoke for 45 min off the cuff. 4000 there. Had 2 q for 2 hours in the cold I will never be in the same room of that line up again. Pics to follow”. I think Barack may have recruited himself another advocate.

Spainish has given us many a great political slogan:

• hasta la vitoria siempre
• el pueblo unido jamas sera vencido
• No pasaran!

Will si se puede join the political lexicon on Super Tuesday? 

I  really did think Radio 1 was loosing the plot with its threat to ‘ban’ Fairytale of New York’ from the airwaves this Christmas despite the brave protestations of the late great Kirsty McColl’s mum. The blogs went mad and advocates won the day when ordinary people stood up for the ordinary person’s Christmas anthem and while we are at it why not make it Number One this Xmas - it sure beats Mr Cowell’s latest pick for stardom. Heckler Spray started the debate and other influential blogs like p2pnet  in on the argument soon after. But the prize for advocate of the day goes to the Irish Times Present Tense.

I love the song. I love its grittiness, its honesty and its sheer emotion. It’s MacGowan and McColl at their best, an Irish ballad with bells on.

Hope nobody is offended but if you want to relive the moment complements of YouTube click here and just for the record here are the lyrics, in full. Deadly!

It was christmas eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, wont see another one
And then he sang a song
The rare old mountain dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eighteen to one
Ive got a feeling
This years for me and you
So happy christmas
I love you baby
I can see a better time
When all our dreams come true

Theyve got cars big as bars
Theyve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
Its no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold christmas eve
You promised me
Broadway was waiting for me

You were handsome
You were pretty
Queen of new york city
When the band finished playing
They howled out for more
Sinatra was swinging,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a corner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the nypd choir
Were singing galway bay
And the bells were ringing out
For christmas day

Youre a bum
Youre a punk
Youre an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scumbag, you maggot
You cheap lousy faggot
Happy christmas your arse
I pray God its our last

I could have been someone
Well so could anyone
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Cant make it all alone
Ive built my dreams around you

It was Weber Shandwick Northern Ireland’s Christmas party on Friday night and we thought we would ask Romeo from the Magic Numbers for a few drinks in the PottHouse ahead of their gig on Saturday night.

‘Love Me Like You’ was the theme for the folk pop English band and we sure enjoyed the company of these musicians with a liking for Belfast. And that’s the thing about this city. It’s got an edge and there is a beat that is pretty unique in Europe these days.

The lads were great craic and Weber Shandwick’s Emma, Vicky and Stevo joined them at the gig on Saturday where they name checked what now must officially be the coolest PR agency in town. Now that’s the power of advocacy!

As for the gig the consensus is they rocked and the Mandela Hall which has seen U2,  Ash,  and Snow Patrol all play on their way up.

Belfast has been attracting A listers forever but in the past two or three years the quality and quantity has gone up. Later this week the Boss returns for the second year in a row and this time its rock and roll.

Off to plan next year’s blow out now. Was thinking of asking Stiff Little Fingers back for a reunion gig.  Rumor has it we’re quite good company here. 

PS. Our Chris is showing real potential on the electric guitar. Next year were going to plug it in for him.  

Every summer the opera would arrive in Malaga. Not for the posh people but for the ordinary men and women. We would sit out late into the night watching, Domingo, Carreras and yes, Pavarotti for free. The eighties were a great decade for the Iberian peninsula. Spain was social democratic and Portugal was free. The economy was finally picking up but the opera and the operetta lived on.

‘Classical’ music is everywhere in the Mediterranean. In school, you learn about it, in church you hear it and in the summer everyone enjoys it. It gives these countries depth and brings art into ordinary life in a way we all too often fail to do in these parts.

Pavarotti, Domingo and Carreras did something special in the summer of 1990 and shared the secret of opera and sport with the rest of the world. Nessum Dorma became the wedding song of the decade, the aria was the new football chant and things would never be the same again. 

Pavarotti is dead but thanks to him classical song is more accessible and literally everywhere.  There is hardly a town in these islands without an opera in the park.

Turns out Pavarotti’s first ever concert in Britain and Ireland was in Belfast. Lets ensure his music is heard here forever.  

I posted last week about the decline in lad mag sales in these parts and how celebrity blogs and YouTube were capturing the gossip hungry and flesh crazy young men.

 The Sunday Times Business had an interesting piece on the US edition of OK! Magazine and its impressive young female editor, Sarah Ivens. Turns out she has grown sales of the celebrity gossip magazine by 54% in the last year establishing it as one of the leading weekly magazines in the US where they fill the gap traditionally occupied by the red tops in Britain and Ireland. Ivens claims to have readers not just on the east and west coasts but also in the mid west where Pop Idol is country and celebrities ride around in pick ups. But her real claim is to have mitigated the impact of the numerous celebrity gossip blogs doing so much damage to her more established competitors such as People, US Weekly or Star Magazine. Blogs like PerezHilton.com which come complete with its own ‘citizen paparrazi’ and gossip on just about everyone you could imagine (it broke the tragic death of Spanish footballer Antonio Puerta as fast as any sports site I checked). Or TMZ.com which reports, picture and all, that Amy Winehouse is not in rehab but toasting herself in the Carribean, although no mention of her father in law’s comments  reported widely in the mainstream media yesterday.

So from the man who secretly sneaks a monthly glance at the glossies respect to Ms Ivens and her small New York based team at OK!. Once a week is surely the right dose of hot gossip. Having this stuff online and in real time 24-7 is cannot be good for you. Or as Dr Paxman might say when criticising 24 hour news, there is no analysis….

Can Northern Ireland become a creative economy and what is a creative economy anyway?

My boss and Weber Shandwick CEO in the UK and Ireland, Colin Byrne, referred to a great book by John Howkins in a recent blog on Byrne Baby Byrne.  Howkins considers the contribution ‘creative industries’ make to the economy. He defines a creative industry as one which make money from ideas. Other economists are also writing on this subject, most notably Richard Florida whose books include the Rise of the Creative Class and The Flight of the Creative Class.

The interesting thing about these thinkers’ approach to creativity is that they define a creative economy is a much broader sense then you would think. Its not just writers, actors and artists. It also includes lawyers, scientists and dare I say it PR consultants. Anyone who (should) thinks for a living. Magnets for ’talented’ people from all over the world, they are places people will move to for work.  The Republic of Ireland has become according to a number of matrix one of the most creative economies on the globe. For centuries a place of artistic creativity it is now also a a major IT and scientific research centre, something that will grow its wealth as well as culture.

Florida identifies three common characteristics of creative economies:

1. Talent - they attract the smartest and most gifted to move their to work;
2. Technology - they have the infrastructure to allow people to work, and;
3. Tolerance - they must be able to accommodate many different types from the IT wizard, the research scientist and the radical artist and make them fell equally at home.

The south has come a long way in the past decade to meet the three T test. The North has the talent and the technology. But will it transform itself into a tolerant place?

I’ll return to this minor obsession of mine later. In the meantime if anyone knows Nora Jones tell her we could set up studio for her here in Belfast!

The Dubs won on Saturday by the way. Dublin - Kerry semifinal. Classic stuff.